


Deep Water

by comehomelove



Category: Star Wars: A New Dawn - John Jackson Miller, Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Developing Relationship, F/M, Fluff and Smut, Pre-Relationship, Working Out My Feelings Through Fic, kanera - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-31
Updated: 2017-10-31
Packaged: 2019-01-27 07:31:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12576788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/comehomelove/pseuds/comehomelove
Summary: Set pre-Rebels, beginning about a year post-Gorse, and moving towards Rebels. Hera hasn't pressed Kanan to talk about his past but a supply-run-gone-wrong on Tierfon turns into a mission that reveals things she'd so far only suspected about him--and about what really happened to the Jedi when the Empire rose. Hera starts to need answers.  Kanan has asked her to trust him-but what does Hera Syndulla know about Kanan Jarrus, anyway? Really know about him? (Will eventually get smutty) (Sorry not sorry).





	Deep Water

They’re having a Bad Day.

Hera isn’t trying to be melodramatic. Bad Days aren’t uncommon. Actually, she and Kanan are good at bad days. They’ve had  a lot of practice since Gorse. It’s been, what, a full solar cycle? It doesn’t feel that long. Or maybe it feels like it’s been longer.

You can’t trust your head about things like this, Hera knows. You have to stick to the facts. The Ghost’s Standard Calendar maintains says it’s been 353 days since Kanan came on board.  353 days, and a lot of them have been Bad. You slip away, you make it back to the ship. Then, the scramble to get the engines going. A sharp intake of breath during takeoff. A a pursuit out of atmo.You get in a dogfight, you make a narrow escape. There's usually a moment with a really narrow dodge, or some warning light comes on, or the hyperdrive doesn't spool up as fast as you'd like it to. It gets your heart rate up, that's for sure. That part's unavoidable. But the only way out is through and the only way through is to put your head down and barrel forward.

 Hera has to admit, though: this is a little worse than usual.

One minute you’re running a supply pick-up from a planet nobody’s ever heard of, and the next you’re surrounded in a hangar bay: five troopers blocking the corridor they’d come from, another three at the entry ramp to the Ghost, and one -- this gets her--visible in the cockpit. Her cockpit. 

She ducks behind the crates they’d been dragging as a particularly well-aimed blaster bolt whizzes past her shoulder. Kanan drops down beside her. “Okay?”

“Not really. I’m not shot, though, if that’s what you mean.”

“Looks like they’ve boarded the Ghost.”

“Yeah, I noticed.” She aims and  fires her blaster through the crack between the crate she was pulling and the one Kanan was. She doesn’t stay up long enough to see if the shot hit. 

“Whatever is in these had better be worth it,” Kanan growls. “I was under the impression this was pretty routine.”

“Tell me about it,” Hera says.

“Got a plan you want to share?” Now Kanan is up and Hera is down.

“When I do, I certainly won’t be keeping it to myself!”

She hears his blaster: one, two, three, four. Takes a precious second to appreciate his steady hands and solid aim. Then he’s beside her again and  for a second they are mirror images: one knee up, one down, blasters to the ceiling. He leans in so she can hear him over the shouts of more approaching troopers and for a second their eyes lock.

“Listen,” he says. “If I can get you on to the Ghost can you take out those bucketheads in the cockpit?”

“Well,  _ yeah _ ,” Hera says impatiently, “but it’s the  _ getting onto the Ghost  _ part I think we’re going to have trouble with.”

“I can do it.”

“What? How--Look out!” she says, and shifts to the side to aim over Kanan’s shoulder at the trooper who’d come up behind him. She hits him square in the weak spot between the helmet and the chestplate and he goes down. Hera settles back on her heel behind the crate. “Okay, I’m listening.”

“On three--I stand up and start shooting. You stand up and run towards the Ghost.”

She blinks. Did she miss something? “ _ What?” _

“I--”

“Are you crazy? That’s not a plan! That’s just running! Running towards eight stormtroopers who are all aiming right at me!”

Kanan peers over the top of the crate. “Right. Well, no, wrong. It’s Twelve stormtroopers, actually. Reinforcements have arrived.”

Panic, fluttering in Hera’s stomach. Her legs are cramping. Her lekku are twitching with agitation and fear. 

This wasn’t the day she planned on having.

But--

“Hera.” Kanan is very close to her now, so close she can see the tight lines around his mouth, the intense focus in his eyes. “Do you trust me?”

It's a good question.

 

***

Even after working together for 353 days-- what does Hera Syndulla know about Kanan Jarrus, anyway? Really know about him?

Her first impression wasn’t good. She's not embarrassed to admit it. From the moment they met she figured knew his type. 

He’d stared at her, slack-jawed. 

_ You speak Basic? _ she asked him. She really hadn’t been able to tell for a minute, the way he was looking at her, mouth moving but no sound coming out.

When he was able to speak:  _ Words fail me _ , he said.

She’d smiled, rolled her eyes.  _ So they do. _

He was one of those: the kind of man who won't leave you alone in the cantina and doesn't get why you don't take it as a compliment. Not dangerous. But not worth a second thought. Filed away, under: not particularly interesting.

Except he didn’t go away.

In that dive-- what was it called? Asteroid Belt--where she was trying to scope out Skelly, he shut up when she asked him to. A definite plus. And while he was definitely a flirt, he wasn't pushy, like so many men. Kept his hands to himself and never got aggressive, either--which Hera thinks is basic decency from one sentient being to another, shouldn't be worth comming home about, but is nevertheless rarer in this galaxy than you'd hope. He smiled a lot, that crooked smile, and asked questions, and seemed to listen to the answers. 

And he turned out to be the kind of guy you'd be lucky to have on your side in a scuffle. The way he moved, quick and controlled. The precision of his aim.  He’d had training, real training. Watching him fight--now she was the one slack-jawed.  He was more than a gunslinger, more than a mercenary.

Then, Vidian. Hera and Kanan both strapped down, both threatened with torture, death. Hera  did her best to be brave, and at first she thought Kanan was, too. She was impressed by that.

Real bravery: even rarer than basic decency.

Was it bravery, though?

The  thing was -- the whole time they were prisoners, he seemed, almost... preoccupied. Distracted. And not in the way of someone who was afraid. No, he was distracted in the way of someone who is...thinking.

He was weighing options. He had something up his sleeve, something he didn’t want to reveal unless it was absolutely necessary. 

That was when Hera realized: if Kanan was flip, sarcastic, crude--it was to buy time. To cover up something...else. What, exactly, she wasn’t sure. But there was something going on beneath the surface. And when he saved her from being crushed under the catwalk on board Forager, when he put his fingers to his lips:  _ shhh-- _ she got a glimpse of it. The real Kanan.

When he lifted that catwalk--

Kanan was a mystery. He was deep, murky water. But in that moment, everything cleared. And she could see, not the bottom--but just how deep the well was.

He was quiet as they left Gorse's system, watching Cynda through the window. 

“Ready?”

He didn't hear her or, if he did, didn't acknowledge it.

“Ready?” she asked again.

“Huh? Oh, yeah.” But he turned away again until the Ghost leapt forward, plunging into hyperspace. 

When the course was set, Hera stood. Kanan hadn't said another word.  It was a little unnerving-- up to that point he had been an easy talker. 

“Something you weren't quite ready to leave behind?” she asked. She’d assumed he hadn’t had anything to leave in the first place -- he’d brought a single worn bag, his blaster, nothing else. But his solemnity was starting to worry her. “Some girl from the cantina you forgot to say goodbye to?” she said, hoping to lighten the mood.

“Hm?”

Hera bit her tongue, exasperated. “You're awfully quiet. I was just wondering if there was something you were regretting back on Gorse.” 

He finally looked at her and she was shocked at the gravity in his face. “No. Nothing on Gorse.”

“You were there a while?”

“A while.” He didn’t volunteer any other information. 

“Well. Let me show you around.”

He’d already fallen in love with the Ghost but she took him on a more detailed tour. The storage compartment in the galley where she kept the caf. The fresher, the method of jiggling the handles to get the hot water out. His cabin. “And this is mine.”

He poked his head in to look around and then glanced back to grin at her. “You get the bigger bed, huh?”

The way he said it--it was clear he wasn’t expecting anything. It was an invitation for her to say what they both knew needed to be made clear. Her ship. Her, the Captain. He, the crew. Lines drawn because they had to be.

“The door locks both ways,” she said, shutting it so abruptly that he had to spring back to avoid getting the tip of his nose pinched. “Nobody gets in while I’m out, and nobody gets in while I’m in.”

“Sounds very safe.”

“Well, if you make a habit of bringing strange men aboard,” she told him bluntly, “you need a door with a good lock.”

He leaned against the wall, put his hands up, palms out. “Understood.”

She nodded. “Good.”

The moment sat there, serious. Then Kanan grinned. “And hopefully mine locks too,” he said. “Can’t be too careful when you’re as handsome as I am.”

She rolled her eyes.  

The first few months Hera stayed tense, waiting for...something. 

For Kanan to reveal another glimpse of who he was in that moment on the catwalk. Who he really was.

She learned things about him, the unavoidable intimacies of living in close quarters with another creature: that he drank caf and ate on a strict schedule (and always brought Hera her own portions before she even knew she wanted them).

That he started his morning with crunches, pullups, pushups in the cargo hold (he caught her watching, once, but they both pretended he hadn’t. She’d blushed in spite of herself.)  

That he did laundry on a schedule and in fact was fastidiously neat and clean in every way (he didn’t mention it, but the Ghost’s galley and the fresher were cleaner with him on board than they’d ever been before).

He was incredibly competent (never said no to anything she asked of him, even when she half expected it) and took direction well, and (for the most part) knew when to stop joking.

But all of this was on the surface. He never talked about himself, or what brought him to Gorse in the first place, or where he planned to go.  Conversation was pleasant, but he was much more prone to ask questions than give answers, and jumped from topic to topic.

That was the thing about Kanan: he was in constant motion. Always on a schedule or, if not,  searching for something to occupy him. He never did one task if he could do two or three simultaneously. Even in hyperspace, during long jumps Hera looked forward to for a chance to take a shower and close her eyes,  Kanan’s prowled around the cockpit hunting for a switch to flip. 

The man seemed incapable of sitting still, as though if he was stationary for even one second that other Kanan, the one she’d seen perform incredible, impossible feats, would boil over. And as a result she could never quite focus on him. She could never quite pin him down. Every time she thought she had him figured out he slipped away before she could put together the last piece of the puzzle.

_ Do you trust me _ ?

Almost a full solar cycle they’d traveled together and she would willingly admit that she’d gotten used to him. Felt comfortable around him. Depended on him.

_ Do you trust me _ ?

The surface of the water was warm. But the depths were dark, and cold, and unexplored. 

_ Hera. Hera! Do. You. Trust. Me? _

***

A blaster bolt hits the front of the crate and the whole thing rattles. A trooper shouts:  _ There’s only two of them! We’ve got them cornered! We’ve got men in the ship. You, take the right side. _

“Hera?” Kanan asks, urgent.

The fervor of her answer surprises her. It grips her from the ends of her lekku down to the tips of her toes and in that instant she is more certain than she’s been of anything.

“Yes!” she blurts out. “Yes, I trust you.”

Their eyes meet. It’s like he knows everything that just went through her head. 

“Okay, then,” he says. “On my mark. Don’t fire. Just run for the Ghost, as fast as you can. And, Hera--” Kanan puts a hand on her shoulder. “--when I say ‘jump’--”

Their eyes are still locked. She nods. 

When he leaps to his feet, it’s in one smooth motion that puts him in a crouch on the other side of the crates before she fully realizes he’s moving. Then he’s up again, and firing two blasters at once and now he’s yelling, “Go!” and she takes a deep breath and darts through the open line of fire to the Ghost’s gangway,  running straight at the troopers who are blocking the ramp, and they’re shouting in confusion, and they’re taking aim, when she hears Kanan roar: “JUMP!”

Jump? Jump where? She’s about to collide with the troopers blocking the ramp to the Ghost, half expecting to be ripped apart by hot plasma. But--

_ Yes. Yes, I trust you _ .

Hera shuts her eyes and jumps.

...and then she’s soaring over their heads, arms and legs and lekku flailing....

She shrieks and looks down to see Kanan, standing between the two lines of troopers, both arms extended: one towards her, and one towards the nine troopers who have just fired their blasters straight at him…

...and their shots swerve off their paths and as Hera lands on the other side of the ramp, just inside the Ghost, there’s the sound of bolts meeting armour, and troopers are screaming...

Gathering herself,  Hera jumps to her feet and whirls around. The three troopers who were on the ramp have fallen, armour smoldering. She can’t see what Kanan did, or where he is now, but she can hear shouts and confusion outside. 

Her head is spinning, but she doesn’t have time to think. Take care of the troopers who boarded her ship. That’s the objective.

Hera runs for the ladder, hoists herself up, slips down narrow passage to the cockpit. She can hear movement and voices inside and her blood boils.

_ Not in my cockpit. _

She presses herself to the wall and takes a deep breath-- then kicks a foot out to activate the door sensor and when it opens fires three quick blasts that hit three marks. 

Three troopers fall. 

Okay. Okay. One unconscious body has slumped over the pilot’s seat and Hera shoves it to the ground, straining with the deadweight. She doesn’t waste any time warming up the engines and the Ghost rumbles around her, controls flickering to life. She can see more troopers arriving into the cargo bay.

The cockpit doors open and Chopper glides in, whirring angrily. 

“Oh, _thanks,_  Chop, I hadn’t noticed.”

Buzzing and spinning. 

“Yeah, well, if I had  _ known _ that we would have been a little more careful,” Hera snaps back. “What are imperials doing on Tierfon anyway? I didn’t think anybody cared about the Dentari sector.”

Chopper blurpps and spins. 

“I don’t know, but whatever it is, he’d better hurry up,” Hera grumbles. “Get the shields up, would you?”

The doors open again, and Kanan is back, and in the corridor she can see-- _ how did he do that?  _ Two of the crates!-- “Ready to get out of here?” 

Blaster bolts are bouncing off the Ghost’s nose. Imperial reinforcements are there in force. 

“Just waiting for you,” Hera says, and then they are rising, rising. The ramp is still down and Kanan is lugging the troopers who are in a pile on the floor back out the narrow passage and rolling them down like barrels. Then he’s shouting,  _ go, go, go _ and Hera is going, she loves this part, the Ghost rising through the air light as a dust mote and the ramp is up and she’s gunning it, they’re out of the bay, they pull around and  _ is that a light cruiser? On Tierfon?  _ But it doesn’t matter. They’re up, up, up and away. 

In the quiet, comforting dark of hyperspace, stars blurred to nothing all around them, Hera sits back. More often than not, these days, the only time she feels safe is when she’s hurdling through space faster than the speed of light. It’s the only place she feels like she has time for deep breaths.

_ JUMP, he yelled, and  _ s he’s flying through the air, sailing over the trooper’s heads…

The cockpit doors open and Kanan comes in, and he’s-- _ is he  _ eating?

He is. With his right hand he’s rubbing his left shoulder and in his left hand he’s holding a sandwich. There’s something in his beard, and he’s wincing as he moves his hand up to his neck, but he’s  _ eating _ . Like the most notable part of their day so far was that they got off their meal schedule.

“Enjoying your lunch?” Hera asks.

He freezes. “Did you want to unpack the crates? Sorry, I wasn’t thinking. I can put this down.”

“No.” Hera stands up. She takes her no-nonsense pose: arms folded, one hip jutted out, eyes flashing.

Kanan stands up a little straighter, drops both hands, including the one holding the sandwich, to his sides.

“We gotta talk,” Hera says.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
